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The Campaign to #AxeDrax

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Wednesday 14th of June 2017

Biofuelwatch report on why Drax power station is the target of protesters.

#AxeDrax is the campaign to shut down Drax power station in Yorkshire by getting the company’s subsidies axed. This year’s annual protest outside Drax plc’s Annual General Meeting in York in April was joined by simultaneous protests around the country: at its major investors’ offices in London and the port of Liverpool, where woodchips arrive to be burnt at Drax Power Station.

Last October saw protests at the power station itself and the newly created government Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Drax likes to promote itself as an environmentally responsible company, trying to reduce fossil fuel consumption and the UK’s carbon footprint. It is also a recipient of renewable energy subsidies from the government. So why are environmental and human rights campaigners demanding Drax’s closure?

The problem with Drax

Drax is one of the UK’s two largest coal-fired power stations. It burns coal from places including Colombia, where the coal industry is responsible for human rights abuses including massacres, assassinations and forced evictions of indigenous people from their land. It has also caused air and water pollution, resulting in illness and malnutrition.

Drax is also the world’s largest biomass power station, burning pellets made from 13 million tonnes of trees in 2016. Just 2% of this wood came from the UK, and the UK’s annual wood production across all industries is 11 million tonnes. It is impossible to imagine how those who champion Drax can think it can ever be considered sustainable with such a heavy reliance on wood felled elsewhere.

Drax’s wood fuel

Drax claims that by burning wood instead of coal, it is reducing our carbon footprint because wood is a ‘carbon neutral’ fuel. This is because it is assumed that the carbon emitted will be reabsorbed by new trees planted to replace those burnt.

However, burning trees releases carbon into the atmosphere immediately – more per unit of electricity generated than coal – and any new trees planted won’t reach maturity and absorb the same amount of carbon for decades, if ever. At a time when we must rapidly reduce our carbon emissions to limit the worst extremes of climate change, it makes no sense to create such a ‘carbon debt’.

Over half the wood burnt at Drax comes from the southern United States, including wood sourced by the pellet company Enviva from biodiverse forests. These important ecosystems are being destroyed to meet the demand for wood pellets in Europe. Some of these forests have been designated by the IUCN as ‘global biodiversity hotspots’, and provide habitat to bears and a variety of bird and amphibian species. Drax is Enviva’s largest customer.

Subsidised climate change

In 2016, Drax received almost £1.5 million a day in ‘renewable energy’ subsidies from the UK government. This is likely to increase, as Drax has now been awarded a Contract for Difference – an even more lucrative subsidy.

These subsidies are paid out of a surcharge on your electricity bill. At a time when 6.59 million households in the UK are considered ‘fuel poor’ (spending more than 10% of household income on heating), paying power companies to burn wood is a disastrous waste of money. Drax relies on these subsidies; without them, it would already have had to shut down.

Dirty diversification

Drax has recently acquired four planned new power stations, thus adding a third form of dirty energy to its portfolio: gas. As a fossil fuel, gas has no role to play in decarbonising our economy; if Drax were serious about its concern for the climate, it would not be investing in more fossil fuels.

The real way forward

We need to rapidly reduce our carbon emissions now, and burning wood in power stations has no part to play in this. Instead of subsidising such false solutions, we should be funding energy-saving measures to reduce our demand, as well as supporting real renewables such as wind and solar power.

Biofuelwatch and our allies will continue to resist Drax, and all unsustainable biomass.

Get involved

Write to your MP to call for an end to Drax’s subsidies for burning wood and coal. For more information and to get involved, see our website, follow us on social media and sign up to get our newsletters and action alerts.

In February 2018, Shell bought energy-provider First Utility, meaning that it would be providing gas and electricity directly to UK-households for the first time. Now, it has rebranded the provider Shell Energy and switched it to 100% renewable. Yet, Shell continues to produce 10% of the oil and gas used in the UK.
Is one of the world’s biggest polluters trying to green-wash or is it making strides to de-carbonise its core business?

Climate change has been in the media spotlight several times over the past few months thanks partly to the release of the frack-free three from Preston prison in September, which was followed by the launch of ‘Extinction Rebellion’ at the end of October.